3 Candidates Withdraw Bids for Chancellor : Colleges: Some trustees criticize policy requiring applicants to pay air fare for first interviews.

Three of the 10 candidates for chancellor of the Ventura County Community College District pulled out of the search process before interviews this week, including one national educator who balked at the idea of paying his own air fare to Los Angeles.

The withdrawal of the prominent candidate left some trustees angry with the district’s longtime policy of not paying air fare for applicants’ first interviews.

“We shouldn’t be quibbling over travel expenses to bring the top two or three candidates for a first interview,” Trustee Norm Nagle told the district board. “This is a nationwide search. Why would someone come to Ventura when they can go [somewhere else] and get their air fare paid?”

Interim Chancellor James Walker said the district has never paid expenses for first-round interviews and simply cannot afford to do so in its search to replace the late Chancellor Thomas G. Lakin. The chancellor’s position has been vacant since November when Lakin died from an infection.

And, Walker added, paying air fare for only the top candidates would be unfair. In addition, determining who those candidates were would be problematic.

“These are already our top candidates,” he said, referring to the 10 chosen for interviews. “How can we determine the top three candidates when we haven’t interviewed them yet?”

Walker said there are no plans to revise the policy, which is followed by some other Southern California community college districts. And Trustee John Tallman said he saw no reason to change.

“I don’t see it as an effective way to hire people by paying their way,” Tallman said. “If they have a sincere interest in changing jobs, they will make that investment. I came here from the state of Washington and I paid my own way.”

Among the three candidates who dropped out this week was Donald Phelps, a University of Texas professor who once served as chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District. Phelps denied reports that his withdrawal was connected to the air fare.

“My application had more to do with my emotional attachment to Dr. Lakin,” Phelps said Thursday. “After a lot of thought, I realized that perhaps my heart was in it more than my head.”

Phelps was chancellor in Los Angeles when Lakin was president of Los Angeles Southwest Community College in the late 1980s. Another of the candidates who dropped out was the only woman selected for an interview, officials said. Of the 55 people who submitted resumes in early September, only two were women.

The third candidate withdrew because of scheduling problems, said Jerry Pauley, district vice chancellor of human resources.

Two candidates were interviewed on Tuesday by a special 23-member committee composed of faculty members, administrators, students, non-teaching staff members and five community representatives each appointed by a trustee. The remaining five candidates are scheduled to be interviewed today.

About three of the candidates will move on to second-round interviews with the board of trustees within the next few weeks. Trustees said they hope to make a final decision in November.

Air fares for finalists in the second-round interviews will be paid, Pauley said.

Asking candidates to pay travel expenses for the first round of interviews is not uncommon at community colleges. Officials at the Saddleback Valley and Coast community college districts in Orange County said they also paid only for second- and third-round interviews in their recent searches for chancellors.

In contrast, the California State University system has paid air fare for candidates from as far away as Hawaii, said spokeswoman Colleen Bentley-Adler.

Other public agencies, including Ventura County, do not pay for any of their candidates’ trips.

Sharon Menick, a management assistant in the county’s Personnel Department, said applicants who did not want to pay for the trip to interview for the administrator’s post last winter conducted their interviews over the phone.

Correspondent Lisa M. Bowman contributed to this story.